The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

Gathandrian Park and the laughter of children. All very pleasant, but this wasn’t how Annyeke Hallsfoot had hoped the day would begin. After the high excitement of the battle and Gelahn’s defeat two day-cycles ago, she’d thought the menfolk would be eager to face the task of building a new Gathandria. Their glorious, glittering city now lay in ruins, the bright towers nearly all smashed into fragments of glass and stone, the Great Library and the museums battered and open to the skies, the theatres and galleries gone, and the trees in the parklands stunted and fallen. Even the Place of Government was not how it had been. Yesterday, when she’d sneaked like an interloper into her former work area, she’d been sure there’d been a few more missing stones from the outside wall and the gash in the roof stretched far wider. Not only that, but the scribe, through compassion or foolishness, had allowed the mind-executioner to escape. Where was he now? In the desert lands? In the Kingdom of Air or hidden deep in the mountains with his murderous dogs? She could not tell, but one thing was certain; Gelahn would surely return to fight them again for the power and land he coveted. They needed to prepare for the battle they would have to face. This was what she thought the menfolk would be planning for.
    She’d thought wrong. The Elders had vanished, leaving her without any further word and in sole charge of the rebuilding programme and the war preparations. Her overseer in the Sub-Council of Meditation, Johan Montfort, had not spoken more than a few sentences to her since that particular announcement and, worst of all, the Lost One, Simon the Scribe, was asleep and useless in her living area. He’d been slumped there for the whole of those two day-cycles, muttering darkly at her whenever she tried to rouse him. To her mind, this wasn’t the action of a man supposedly sent to help them change their world. This was the action of a man in denial.
    The worst of it was the presence of the mind-cane. In her house. It seemed to be there simply because Simon was, but she didn’t think the scribe had any control of it at all. Gods and stars help them. If that was the case, no one else had even a whisper of hope in understanding it. For the last two mornings, its strange humming had woken her. When she’d drawn aside the curtain giving the scribe some privacy in her home, she’d seen its dark length with the silver carving on the top resting near Simon’s makeshift bed. It had been vibrating like a wild animal about to attack. Damn it, she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that, but it definitely felt like a living thing, not an object. A dangerous one, too. The thought of getting close to it made her shiver.
    “Annyeke?”
    She turned, wiping her hands free of the cornflour as best she could. Talus stood right next to her, his hair peaked up from his head like the distant, and now destroyed, mountains. He was seven summers old, and she’d all but adopted him during the final stages of what the people were already naming the Gathandrian Wars. She was even becoming used to being a mother. Almost. Though perhaps elder—much elder—sister was more closely akin to the truth of it.
    “You’re early,” she said with a smile she hoped might look sincere.
    “The bread smells nice.”
    “Ah, you’re hungry then.”
    When he nodded, she gestured at him to sit at the table and brought out the bread she’d made yesterday. He ate as if he hadn’t eaten in a moon-cycle. She couldn’t remember ever being that young.
    “Annyeke?” he said again, between mouthfuls.
    “Mmm?”
    “Why doesn’t the Lost One get up?”
    Annyeke sat opposite him. Her body felt weary, as if she’d been running for a long time and hadn’t stopped yet. She ran her hands through her hair, not caring about the remnants of the flour. She thought of all the things she could say and then decided, as usual, to tell the truth to her young charge. His courage deserved it.
    “I don’t really know,” she said. “It could be because he’s tired. And he has had a lot to go through to reach Gathandria. Or it could be because he’s scared about what will happen next and he doesn’t want to make the first step towards it, whatever that is. Or he might be worried about the mind-cane. The gods and stars know, we’re all worried about the mind-cane, or at least I am. It’s like having a hungry river-wolf at home.”
    At this, Talus grimaced. She knew